Mortal Kombat 9 sold closer to 4 million units than 3 million, according to NetherRealm Studios' Ed Boon. This would mean Mortal Kombat 9 likely outsold the vanilla release of Street Fighter 4, as according to Capcom's IR page, which was last updated on September 30, 2012 — their 4th entry of the previously long dormant franchise had moved 3.2 million copies to date world wide.

This figure doesn't factor in subsequent updates, like the disc releases of SSF4 and SSF4 AE v2012. The disc version of Super Street Fighter 4 was reported to have sold 2 million copies world wide.

Regardless, this is an impressive feat for the NetherRealm Studios team, and shows that the Mortal Kombat brand still has a lot of staying power. It will be especially interesting to see if their upcoming title, Injustice: Gods Among Us, can buck the trend of sluggish sales with recent fighters, when it's released in April of this year.

MK isn't dead. I believe what is being referred to by that statement is that taste in any sort of intelligent fighting game is dead. It's about lesser minds being unable to understand the complexity of serious fighting games, instead being entertained by a simple game requiring very little cognitive function. There are, of course, more people who would be classified as having low intelligence in the world, than those who would be classified as having high intelligence, which explains why MK is so popular.

@ghosttouchdownsno we havent but from what we've seen and heard its not looking good, it did when it was first unveiled but the oversaturation of Batman characters in a small roster of 24-30 characters is a huge put-off, the terrible costume design, the poses and animation of the characters that arent true to the source material e.g Batman.hopefully to the run-up of release that will change but the way its going im afraid it may ruin Ed Boons rep, especially after delivering awesome fanservice with MK9

1) The CoD series has been one of the best selling games in the past few years, doesn't say anything about the actual game being anything more than average.

2) SF4 / MvC3 had different iterations and updates, granted most were for pay. If MK9 made so much money why hasn't NetherRealm come out with more support for the game? Because they're concerned more with sales than the actual community.

3) MK has always been a series targeted at the general gaming crowd first, the actual fighting game community second. The series has never had any staying power in the fighting community because of this.

4) It's sad seeing the same people bashing Capcom for trying to open up their games to the general crowd while still putting the fighting game fans first patting NetherRealm on the back for the MK series. A series that has never put the actual fighting part of fighting games first.

I think a lot of people decide if a game is dead or not based on tournament turnout, which is why anime games "die" so quickly. Support your game by going out and playing it, not just staying in the living room and playing online.

Also, MK hasn't outsold vanilla SFIV, even considering the fact that MK was given more than a year (SFIV was replaced a year later).

MK9 outsold SFIV and T6 too...I don't know why, but people believe SF brought back the fighting genre back to success when lots of other games sold way more than this even before 2008...as a matter of fact 3D fighters sells more yet they're not so popular within the community

#13: Your pathetic attempt at constructing a basic sentence and inability to comprehend proper English grammar classifies you into the group of people who need to redo grade 7 English before attempting to label someone (albeit inaccurately) the same label that anyone with a post secondary education would classify you as.

Shall I simplify that for you so you can understand it better: learn English.

People who don't play Street Fighter games complain about the frequent revised versions that cost money, but then have to move on to a whole new game when their game doesn't get a new version, or they stick with a very small pool of players. Right now, most SFIV players I know are saying they'd pay for a 2013 update as the game feels stale to them, as any game does after playing for a year straight with nothing new added.

Edit: I also agree with 16, except for the first point. I'd say CoD is now stale since they've just remade MW every year for the past several years, but that was a very good game. I'd like to see them step up and make a new game, but there is no incentive as long as they keep selling as well as they do now.

13#: Since this seems to be outside of your mental grasp, subjective tastes are very much influenced by intelligence. An example can be used in terms of music, as the most popular music in the mainstream is quite obviously popular to those of simple minds, not intellectuals. ie: Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, etc.

If you honestly believe subjective tastes have nothing to do with intelligence I would advise you to take a university level psychology course, but of course make sure to finish high school English before that. ;)

It's in the Evo lineup because Mr. Wizard wanted a US fighting game in it, and considering that the only other notable US game is Skullgirls (which is more or less dead competitively), it was an easy choice. There's no denying that MK9 had the lowest number of entrants last year though, lower than even Soul Calibur and KOF.

As it has already been mentioned, the game gets a lot of love from the casual crowd because of things like fatalities and story mode so it's bound to sell more than its competitors that focus more on the competitive aspect of the genre. MK9 is probably the best Mortal Kombat ever, but it's still not without issues. On a competitive level, even top level players are always nitpicking and complaining about problems with the game, from the 1p side advantage to balance issues. And the MK scene isn't exactly getting bigger either; there's little to no international competition and the US scene is getting kinda stagnant. I am by no means taking anything away from Boon & Netherrealms nor am I saying that MK sucks; but it's not going to be lasting very long. You can almost guarantee that Injustice will take its spot at Evo next year.

I miss the days when the fighting game community could be happy any fighting game was successful, regardless of company. Now everyone seems so self entitled and believe that one game is indefinitely better than the other and go to war over it. We are supposed to be a community of gamers who enjoy the crap out of fighting games but now we just divide ourselves into factions and hate on each other just because one game may have done better than another. And I'm talking about all factions from capcom fanboys to NRS fanboys. Just be happy the fighting game community is still successful and that there are multiple different types of fighting games for all players.

#34: Compared to what, exactly? Are you saying that MK at high level is even remotely similar to SF at a high level? Is that why people who have been playing other fighters competitively were able to constantly place 1st or 2nd in MK tournaments in the past, yet MK players are unable to replicate those results in games like SF?

Of course things are different now, but I believe that if those players actually continued to play MK those results would have stayed the same.

It is not a matter of personal tastes, simply the aspect of high level play. It is definitely one of the easier fighting games to learn how to play, with combo execution being fairly elementary and blocking simply being assigned to a single button.

Compare MK to games like Guilty Gear where you have numerous defense options as well as things like force roman cancelling and you'll understand why so many people play a game like MK. SF would be somewhere between those two games in terms of difficulty, but still much more complex than MK. I am also factoring in character balance, which I consider to be very poor in MK.

Regardless, play what you are able to play. You don't see people who can't learn math try to be a physics professor. Same concept.

Also mo123: You're an idiot. I don't see how two posts addressing blatant facts about your abilities has anything to do with getting to me. You made a post and I addressed it accordingly, I was unable to add additional content to my previous post, so I made another one. I guess it's simply because you are suffering from numerous cognitive biases and you must create some sort of delusional idea to reassure that your view on a matter is reality. Those are quite common ego defense mechanisms in the average person though, so don't sweat it.

*shakes head*i got news for you buddy. Capcom is about making money first and giving the fans what they want after they see dollar bills flashing in the air second.

btw its so stupid to think ""Hey if it sold so well then why haven't they kept supporting it". by that logic i guess games like person 4 arena, tekken, and king of fighters didn't sell too well because they didn't have support after 3 months after they were released? Capcom games only get support after their games come out is because there SO BAREBONED OR BROKEN!Capcom can never do anything right the first time around.

#37 There it is. You decided to come on here and insult the intelligence of people who have different taste in games than you do. You have no facts regarding intelligence in relation to taste in fighting games. You certainly have no facts regarding my education. You are simply trying to formulate your responses to sound like you are intelligent while you have no knowledge or information to back up what you are saying. That is why you lack the intelligence you so desparately want to demonstrate that you have.

#13: Your pathetic attempt at constructing a basic sentence and inability to comprehend proper English grammar classifies you into the group of people who need to redo grade 7 English before attempting to label someone (albeit inaccurately) the same label that anyone with a post secondary education would classify you as." This is a run on sentence, young man! I want to see you after class.

2) 4 DLC characters, over 10 classic skyns and a BFG edition, in my opinion this is quite a good number of updates to a fighting game, unlike capcom which tries desperatly to milk their succesful games with countless overpriced DLC and and new versions. (There is a huge difference when MK has alterate costumes already included in the game and Capcom sells all costumes separatley, which game actually has more contentand which one tries to milk it?)

3) In my opinion that's a good thing, MK is a game anyone can play, Street Fighter is agame only a few can play, MK seeks to please everyone in the game community, Capcom only tries to please "pros". In my opinion, this is a +1 point for Netherreal rather that a point against.

4) Capcom ha snever done that, STxTekken is the mose recent proof of that; a barebones game aimed only for pros, not to an open crowd of gamers.

And, please, fighting game community? From my point of view, this fightig game community you speka of so proudly are the most anoying and irritating Capcom fanboys who think there are no more fighting game sother that the ones Capcom make. Namco, Netherreal or any other indie Fighting game is not worth and it's trash.

Also, Capcom fanboys may repeat it a smuch as you want. Street Fighter may be a better "fighting" game in a competitive level but the newest Mortal Komabt is, by far, a better & much more enjoyable game.

Even though there are various points to support both sides, the conclusion is quite obvious. I hope you are able to read all of that, there might be a few difficult words here and there, but you should be able to manage. I did specifically look for articles that are easier to read, just so there is no confusion on your part.

Disregarding the fact that SF4 also had PC/Steam sales and he has no concrete numbers, we know that people gobble up MK games almost no matter what.It took a disaster at the level of Armageddon to sell like less than a mil

There's more to fighting games than just execution. You mentioned "intelligent" games, but you're not arguing for intelligence at all: you're just arguing for muscle memory. Sure, the above games may require more muscle memory. In terms of having to know all your options at any given spacing and being able to read your opponent while making highly difficult conversions, MK9 holds its own against SF4 any day.

As to why non-MK community members did well in tournies a year ago (I can't believe this even needs addressing btw), Chris G and Justin Wong are good players who have played the game since day 1. Do they practice as much? No. Chris G doesn't practice Third Strike, and he gets top 3 at 3S tournaments. Does that mean Third Strike is idiot's game? Of course not.

And MK9 is not that imbalanced. People struggled with Kabal and Kenshi because they were too lazy to learn how to counter-poke and low-dash block cancel. Kenshi's and Kabal's lose in tournament all the time.

By far your most shallow criticism is that of the block bottom. How is this easier than HOLDING BACK!?!? And don't EVEN give me that crap about "mai gamez has is real Cross-Upz." So does ours, and cross-ups are FAR more dangerous in MK9 than they are in street fighter, mostly because PRESSURE is far more dangerous in MK9 than it is in Street Fighter. If you block a cross up, you now not only have to deal with your chip damage and meter-gain from your opponent, but now you have a mix-ups with far more damage-potential than anything you'd see in SF4.

And then you have anti-cross up tech, which adds ANOTHER layer to the meta-game. Whenever a player does a cross-up, a good player can often punish with low-poke into juggle into combo conversion. The opponent has safe cross-up attacks, but they do much less damage and don't lead to pressure. This makes the entire cross-up game multilayered, and by extension, much more dangerous. Far more sophisticated than the ancient guessing game of "which way should I block?

I love SF4; I've played both games regularly for the last 2 years. Try MK9 and see for yourself. Stop judging things you clearly haven't played.

BlackReaper, you're smart but all you are doing is just espousing your own opinion. Which is fine but that doesn't mean it is fact.

What you call simple, may be complex to others and what you find complex, may be simple to some. People like different things, which is good, keeps everything and everyone from being too homogenous.

Its no surprise. SF has always been more popular within the FGC than in the general gaming community. MK and most 3D fighters are the inverse of this.My casual friend loves to play Tekken with me since we both don't know what we are doing but its fun to mash buttons but when I bring up SF, he says its too "Hard" and then we go back to playing.

Nope, I do not see any studies in your links referring to MK9 vs other fighting games in regards to intelligence levels. If you look back to my previous post, I did not mention music since I was aware of studies that showed listening to certain music in the womb could increase intelligence. It is certainly not a fact and neither are those studies you referred to but there is some evidence.

If you take anything from this, at least realize that truly intelligent people would see that insulting large groups of people for simply enjoying a videogame is not helpful to this community and society as a whole. Next time try to think twice before you insult millions people simply for having a different opinion, because it really takes away the whole point of being on sites like this, which is to have fun enjoying a hobby. I am really sick of seeing these types of idiotic statements, not just from you, and not just on this site, but I had the day off today and you were just a convenient target.

By the way, I really like Radiohead, and I listen to and even play Beethoven. Thanks for helping me realize how intelligent I am.

#56: There is no such study for fighting games. Nobody cares about the correlation between fighting game interests and intelligence. That interest isn't very widespread. Music is the most common interest that the study was used for, but it applies to other things as well. Not that hard to figure out.

I disagree homie and if mk has no staying power than why is it at evo for a third time? then you say why does neatherrealm not come out and support for the game or community?! have you seen any mlg stream? they support their game and the people who play their game.

Let me inform you on something, video game companies (except for a few independent studios) will always try to grab the casual gamer attention before any pro gamer because the casual audience makers them a whole lot more money than a pro gamer of a certain game.

For example, the capcom fgc makes up for 3% of game sales and maybe even less for the mk community so expect more fighting games to cater to casual fans more than pro gamers.

It's not an article, it's a link to a book. Look to the top right as there is a link to my second link, which I will post above for you. That might be a little bit easier for you right? Since you weren't able to find it on the first link. =/

#55: It would seem to link does not work when posted on another site, but if you click in the top right of the first link you will be taken to that link. If that doesn't meet your subjective criteria, that is your fault, not mine. Also making the assumption that things get outdated in that field and assuming that it applies to every subject in that field is false. If you don't feel like reading, nobody is forcing you to. I am at work right now and don't have time to cater to your specific requirements of an article that meets APA standards, yet has less than 200 pages, no words with more than 10 letters, etc etc.

But I hate to break it to you, the journal is a collection of different articles. That one particular article only has less than 20 pages. Only articles that have significant findings relevant to a particular era's social, political, cultural and economical agendas might have chance to get published. The process of publishing a scientific article is often an arduous and bureaucratic process, thus many rich and interesting findings have been shelved in a locker somewhere that will never see the light of day.

We still quote Sigmund Freud from time to time and admire at his foresight but we laugh our ass off when someone seriously want to apply his theories word by word in modern day.

@57 Like watching a trainwreck, I wasn't going to, but I couldn't resist:

"There is no such study for fighting games."

Exactly my point

"Nobody cares about the correlation between fighting game interests and intelligence."

Obviously you do when you made up this correlation in order to insult millions of people.

"That interest isn't very widespread. Music is the most common interest that the study was used for, but it applies to other things as well. Not that hard to figure out"

The notion that the music study (which wasn't even very reliable in itself) could be superimposed over taste in fighting games is laughable. However, if you insist, the more orchestral tone to the music in MK9 would put it higher on the chart you referred to than the much more "rock" sounding music in Guilty Gear. (not that I agree with that premise)

OK, I seriously have to stop now. This actually would up being entertaining. I guess I'm not that intelligent either...

1) The same can be said about SF, MvC, SNK, Tekken, Arc etc. What's your point?

2) If they are concerned with sales, they'd do the same thing as Capcom and relaunch more expansions to make more money off the same demographic which already bought their game. Double dipping the community and also providing on disk content which require pay for a triple dip.

3) Yes, even though they even brought in top combatant players to aid in the development of the game. Curse them for going the extra mile though and adding additional content on top of the main mechanics of the game.

4) Maybe they are like you (As well as those who agree with you without objection) and only hear/believe what they want to believe instead of doing research for themselves and keeping an open mind.

Time and time again this genre community continues to show ignorance and are the most fickle crowd in gaming. There is some kind of unwritten rule out there that says if it's not Capcom, SNK, 2D etc or does not abide by the ancient bible of preset rules established by one of the above, than there should be no reason to support it or it's company.

Oh and everyone who does support it are apparently invisible, because their community is somehow always dead. The FGC is its own poison.

#66: I think it takes more than a few articles for any sort of understanding on this particular subject.

It would be difficult for me to find one or two articles online that explain the correlation between interests and intelligence in extensive detail. If you are truly interested you can search the internet and read numerous articles in order to gain deeper insight on the subject if you wish. After I get home from work I will also try to find numerous articles that meet the criteria you asked for and link them.

"OK, I seriously have to stop now. This actually would up being entertaining. I guess I'm not that intelligent either..."

Huh? Dude I was actually thinking of replying to what you were saying, but it didn't make any sense. What? I'll just nod and agree with whatever you say just so you can go on believing what you want about whatever, okay?

Most professors are interested in FPS, the murder simulator. Unfortunately there are too many variables to account for by using a real game. Thus many of them resort of simple dots and lines and blips and bloops.

You can't blame them for taking the easier route in a publish or die world of Academic research realm. Get your tenure or get fired... eventually.

why do people act like since vanilla was only out for a year it shouldnt be compared to mk11. Vanilla was the highest selling version of SF4, so mk9 outperformed vanilla and raped the sales of the subsequent versions.

lol, exactly. BTW, TYM finally made a shirt with the "MK is dead" slogan. Despite a few users, EventHubs has been much more open and respectful towards MK than it was about a year ago. I appreciate all the users who don't mindlessly judge MK9.

"why do people act like since vanilla was only out for a year it shouldnt be compared to mk11. Vanilla was the highest selling version of SF4, so mk9 outperformed vanilla and raped the sales of the subsequent versions."

Because, people would who would have bought vanilla SF4 would buy Super instead. If Super didn't exist, vanilla SF4 sales would be much, much higher. That's why comparing vanilla SF4 sales to MK9 sales isn't meaningful.

@81 It's a point of reference. You guys are missleading the idea of the topic, is not that MK sold more than vainilla SFlV, is that despite the fact of not being a "competitive" fighting game it had good sales.

The reason that SSF4 and AE sales aren't included in there is because people there is a huge amount of overlap between SF4 and SSF4, so counting it as another sale would be ridiculous, same with AE the vast majority of people who bought AE for consoles were upgrading SSF4. MK9 is .. MK9. The vast majority of those sales are unique sales with a few replacements here and there. It's a good comparison.

A lot of Capcom fans don't give MK9 enough credit. Sure I only played it for a couple months before giving it up for other things, but that's just because the netcode was ass. Offline MK9 was fun, and on a competitive level it was pretty deep. Was it the deepest fighting game ever? Nah, but it was good. It's not like Capcom has ever had ass netcode ruin a game right? If MK9 had better netcode it would be more popular than it is, plain and simple. If Injustice is nearly as good as MK9 but has decent netcode it will be a very successful game.

C'mon guys, I love Capcom fighters just as much as anyone else, but give Netherrealm some credit. Most fighting games fall to obscurity after 2 months or so. The game got good sales, that's a good starting point, if they can make a game that works as well online as SF4 (It's a fairly low bar) then they can make a fighting game with some serious longevity.

1) Vanilla version vs. THE ONLY VERSION. That in itself is good enough to poke a fat hole into this.

2) Folks, MK has no real staying power, like it or not. It's the game we look back at and smile, but FGC wise, no. There's no updates. There's no major rebalancing. Many of the blows lack impact unless someone's getting fatalitized or hit by an Super Art knock off (er, I mean X-Ray move). Their dlc was 20 bucks...for 4 fking characters (4 for 20 or 10 for 40 + new stages + new Super Arts? How about 4 for 20 or 4 for 15? My god, MK dlc is such a bargain!). Eh, I'd just rather stay with Capcom.

3) Hate on Capcom all you want, but in the end, if they have the gall to try to deal with the FGC's whiny bastards, making iteration after iteration of games that won't even sell at full price (or just balancing for free), re-releasing old titles that people were so fond of so that others can bitch about it, so on and so forth, you can't say they "just don't care". It's a BUSINESS. Programming is HARD. Game devs get it EVEN HARDER. They need to make money and keep up with Repeat of Duty so that they can actually PRODUCE MORE CONTENT. That being said, they aren't without faults. Redoing Dante in DmC was just ass.

4) Even with all that said, getting a fighting game to sell 3.5+ mil is an awesome feat, and the team that made MK9 happen should be proud.

Lmao @ Injustice, a game coming out in april/may replacing MK for a tournament 2-3 months after it's release. I don't care how much it sells, that's ridiculous. You are throwing up an incredibly delusional mental block to dismiss the news in this article to reassure yourself that MK is trash.

And lol @ MK players complaining about things that need updates/changes when it took 4 updates to get SF and MVC right (and people are still complaining about some things). I don't even have MK, I just wanted to destroy your argument.

Illness690Then you should say SFIV made 2D fighters popular again...remember T5 sold 6 million copies, + 2M with DR, a couple of years before. SFIV is a series, not a single game and the company count them as iterations...why? becouse the people who bought SSFIV are the same who bought the original...

I know a lot of people here hate mk9 including myself but we just gotta hold dat shxt anyways this is good an bad I am not even looking forward to injustice but this game had some good ideas I'll give them that